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Tuesday, February 17, 2015

RECIPE #82 & 83: Breaking the Habit (Coffee Porter)

When I first brewed my Coffee Porter it was because my wife told me to stop adding Brett to everything. I was going to make 10 gallons of Porter, and then add Brett to half of it for secondary. She told me to add coffee instead. So I did... to the plain version. The beer that ensued was a wonderful marriage of roast and cocoa. It was difficult to tell where the coffee started and the beer stopped. When Becca told me to do it, I did, assuming it would be a fun beer to make once, she would be happy, and I would still get to make the Brett finished version I really wanted. Little did I know that this would be one awesome beer and is now being refined to house a spot in my Flagship beers for the brewery.This version got a couple tweeks to it. I changed out the hops for Crystal since my homebrew shop didn't have any Challenger, and that's okay as I didn't really like the woody notes it threw in the original (nor do I like it enough to keep it on hand). I also swapped out the Munich malt for Vienna. Vienna is one of the malts that will be blended into my base grist for the brewery, so their is no point in getting Munich for just one beer, plus I tend to like Vienna a little more. I also changed up the yeast on half. I wanted to see if the yeast I want to use as a house strain would work for this beer, again, no sense in having an extra ingredient (yeast) to make a flagship beer unless I have to. The last change was completely beyond my control. When I brewed the first version I picked a great coffee not realizing it was a one-off single origin from the roasters. When I went to get more they didn't have it any more. I went with one of their yearly offerings that is supposed to throw cacao, caramel, and hibiscus. Of course the first two go great with the base, and I am hoping that the hibiscus pairs well with the pineapple from the Trois. So far the wife likes both versions!NAME: Breaking the Habit

Process:01/24/2015 Brewed alone. First time using my own mill. Had the mill jam and the rollers stop. Had to empty the hopper, and free up the rollers, then start again. Crush looks really good, small uniform kernels and fairly whole husks (lautering went smoothly). Mashed in at 1.5 qt/lb 150*F for 60 minutes plus a 10 minute vorlauf via pump. Batch sparged with 185*F water at 5.5pH. Collected 13.25 gallons preboil. Boiled for 60 minutes adding hops per recipe. 10 minute whirlpool and then chilled to 66*F in 30 minutes. Transferred into 2 6 gallon Better Bottles via pump. Hop screen clogged shut again leading to an hour long transfer, and disfiguring the screen to get enough flow to fill the fermentors. Pitched decanted yeast starter/slurry, and set temp to 70*F at 2pm. West Yorkshire was forming krausen by 10pm, blowoff eminent by 6am. Brett Trois about 8 hours behind.

Day 3 bumped temp up to 72*FDay 5 bumped up to 75*F and maintainedDay 7 samples show FG achieved already ~1.010 5 points lower than I was shooting for.Day 12 took off heat and let drop to 60*FDay 13 racked to purged keg under CO2 pressure and added coffee beans suspended in hop bags. Maintained 68*F for 36 hours. Coffee notes have a little too much green bell pepper, really hoping that calms down fast.Day 16 - 2/9/15 - Removed coffee, purged, put into keezer at 37*F set to 35 psi.Day 18 - 2/11/15 - Dropped back to 11 psi, burped keg, starting to drink less than 3 weeks from brewday.

I have a feeling that WL will do something with the name to reflect that it isn't actually Brett.

I have ECY Anomala and Wyeast Brett C which I have thought about using. I am actually ramping up my Jasper Yeast 087 Chateuax as well as BKYeast's C3 isolate to compare. The JY087 is supposed to have very low acid and lots of pineapple but might be too slow to hit FG for a brewery situation. C3 sounds intriguing with pineapple, mango, citrus, bubblegum, and light woody notes. I have also thought about using ECY B Cust just the "acidity likely to increase overtime" doesn't seem like a good thing for the non-Saison packaged beers sitting on a shelf.

Thanks for the info on C2, good to know what it will do with hops. I'm going to build up the Brett C to see how it does. I can't get my slurry of C3 to wake up and according to Jasper he doesn't think the Chateaux will do fast enough primary fermentations for a production brewery. I might try to get my hands on BSI Drie through a brewery in town.